The pressure is growing on the Justice Department to produce supposedly "deleted" e-mails that could reveal whether government lawyers during the Bush administration were instructed to devise legal justifications for torture.
A U.S. federal judge on Saturday ordered Vice-President Dick Cheney to preserve a wide range of records from his time in office.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is a setback for the Bush administration, which has been pushing for a narrow definition of materials that must be safeguarded under the Presidential Records Act.
Don't celebrate yet, but CREW (who are the plaintiffs) have won the first round in the battle to get the Judicial branch to agree that the Vice-President, is, in fact a member of the executive branch, which is actually what Cheney's defence hinges on here. However, the injunction is an extraordinary measure while the Court considers the matter. Kollar-Kotelly might end up ruling in Cheney's favour, but at least for the time being, Cheney can't fax his records to Shredderville quite so easily.
In my last post on Common Cause, I didn't bring up the newer better groups that have emerged to make corruption and good government voting issues. CREW and Public Campaign, while both are explicitly nonpartisan and do not do work on behalf of candidates, are extremely aggressive about putting the question of good government and corruption to voters. Public Campaign, for instance, has worked on McCain's flouting of FEC law, and the group did push for the FEC to step in on petty cash. CREW is unafraid to go after Republicans, and though corruption is nonpartisan, takes the fight to where it tends to be.
Ultimately these groups are pushing for nonpartisan solutions, public financing of elections and stronger ethics enforcement in Congress, but they are asking the voters to make that choice. And that's the right way to deal with corruption in a democracy.
Public Citizen, the government watchdog group, is offering itself as a character witness for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in his defense against recent reports questioning his close ties to lobbyists.
"Regardless of how many lobbyists are working on his campaign or raising money for him, John McCain has fought for 14 long, hard years for reforms that seriously limit lobbyists' power," Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, said in a statement....
Claybrook said McCain has a record of standing up to powerful interests in Washington. "He has fought for campaign finance reform, limits on gifts and travel from lobbyists, and extensive public disclosure of lobbyists' activities - all of which limit the influence of lobbyists and the companies that hire lobbyists in Washington, D.C.," she said.
People at Public Citizen hate the branding associated with their founder, Ralph Nader. But I suppose it's just in their DNA.
STATE BLOGS
